Today, there exist hundreds of thousands of mobile data applications for mobile devices, including machine type communication (MTC) applications and non-MTC applications. Many of these applications may utilize mobile broadband connections to provide various types of communications to users of wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs), (i.e., mobile stations).
Some existing “always on” mobile data applications, such as instant messaging (IM), social networking applications, alarm and surveillance systems, and the like, are currently bringing challenges to operator networks. In general, a mobile data application running on a WTRU may involve interactive communications, through an operator network, with an application server (AS) located in the Internet.
The AS and the mobile data application may periodically exchange “heartbeat” messages, (also known as “keep-alive” messages), to keep the application session alive and also to avoid the expiration of a network address translation (NAT) mapping, which may cause an ongoing Internet protocol (IP) session to disconnect. In addition to periodic keep-alive messages, an application may also generate frequent status update messages to notify a WTRU user regarding status updates associated with the application, (e.g., presence information of buddies in an instant messaging (IM) buddy list, updates of user location upon user “check in”, updates of “Facebook likes” to the WTRU user's friends, and the like).
However, these keep-alive messages and status update messages associated with different applications running on numerous WTRUs may take a considerable toll on the battery life of these WTRUs. Further, considerable signaling traffic congestion in the core network may occur due to these messages.